


Plants can really ruin your career

by Faetyl



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fae AU, M/M, dryad, jersey devil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:41:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12205011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faetyl/pseuds/Faetyl
Summary: Dave is a cryptozoologist and pisses off a spirit of the New Jersey Pine Barrens





	Plants can really ruin your career

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thehatpile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehatpile/gifts).



The Pine Barrens of New Jersey were quite the experience. Thick trees and endless seas of dead leaves. Everything looked the same to Dave. How was he ever going to find his way out? Trailblazing had seemed like a great idea. After all, the Pine Barrens were home to the Jersey Devil. Not vengeful spirits: nymphs and faeries didn’t exist. They were bullshit. Stories told to young kids so they could fill their dreams with magic.

As a professional cryptozoologist Dave knew the truth, and it was out there. Bigfoot, for example, was very real; the many hair samples, videos, and print castings proved that. Then, there was the reason he was even here. The Jersey Devil had come out of hiding. There had been more and more sightings. He’d even gotten his hand on a shitty trail cam where the grainy night vision had caught the huge monster.

It was huge, but not the twelve feet everyone said, more like seven foot eight. Which was still a monster of a creature. A big monster of a creature. It had the ass of a shaggy animal—not a goat, the muscular structure was more reminiscent of a horse, but it was shaggy. Hooves the size of serving plates. Horns that curled out of his head. Muscled arms. Long claws that melded from his fingers. And a human face. A beautiful human face (what the fuck).

Dave cut another x on a tree and huffed. That was what number? Eh who cared. He was hot and sweaty, his shirt clung to his back, and he was exhausted. He’d been at this since six am. He was ready to fall aslee— why was that flower moving?

He leaned forward as the flower moved to him, blooming. It puffed a blue pollen in his face that made him cough and the world seemed to slow down. Now, he did not just get sprayed by a fucking flower. He stood and toppled back down, a vine wrapping around him. Panic seeping in through the sleepy fog, he looked up to see a pissed creature covered in flowers.

Sleep.

It was not a choice but a command, and he followed, eyes closing, and was gone.

 

Humans were inconsiderate. Well, unless they were witches or hippies. God, Dirk missed the sixties. Those were the good days. Full of people hugging trees, and staying the fuck away from his forest.

Humans liked to mark their way. He knew in Aokigahara, a place where humans went to die, they didn’t tend to anger the forest and the spirits within: they tied strings and ribbons, things easily taken down. But in the US, humans stomped around thinking they owned everything. And they didn't; had it not been for an agreement with a witch a few thousand years ago, he’d have reclaimed this state already. But no. Let the witches handle human affairs. Keep out of it. Until they were in his world.

The human currently cutting into trees was on his shit list. Every cut made his blood spill. It flowed watery and golden down his cheek as he stared at the sleeping human. The colour of his blood matched the fall, as did the orange and red maple leaves woven through his hair like a crown and the browned hue of his skin that complemented the wilting red carnations and sunflowers that decorated his body. Winter was around the corner and he didn’t have the time to repair the damage done to the trees. This human was gonna pay.

But before he did anything rash, he took the steps needed to summon his friend, David Lalonde, who was a voice of reason. He was calm and collected, and kept Dirk from reacting impulsively. David was good at keeping Dirk to his promise. Damn witches.

The human was waking up. Good. About fucking time. Dirk eyed the human with distrust as red eyes opened. He tried to move, the vines tightening to make sure he couldn’t get away. He was confused, and looked more scared the longer he struggled.

Dirk cleared his throat, and the human turned his head up towards him. His jaw slackened as he looked up. “What, faeries—”

Dirk put a vine around his mouth. “Don’t you dare compare me to those little shits. They are pixies with a little magic. Don’t you dare. I am a spirit." Wait. Mercy was good, mercy meant the human might learn a lesson and get out of his hair. "What’s your name?” he asked.

The vine moved to let the human speak. “D... Dave. What—”

The vine gagged him again with an unnecessary amount of force.

“Dave, you’ve cut one hundred trees. So, the witch of this forest's gonna bind you here until I see fit to release you.” He reached forward, picking up a strange device the human had dropped on the ground. It was black, with a reflective lens. His reflection looked back at him with vague interest, “What is—”

Suddenly, a bright light blinded him. He dropped the offending device, and it fell to the ground covered in moss and sprouting little flowers. The human, Dave, made a noise of protest.

David couldn’t help but snicker at the overreaction from the Forest Prince. Oh boy. David knelt and began drawing in the dirt, a simple binding should keep this human in place. The Earth Mother would keep the bind fueled through the seasons to come.

 

David looked up as the human spoke - “My camera, no, that cost so much…” - The gag that had been silencing him vanished, nice job Dirk, you can’t even keep him quiet.

“When you leave it’d have been out of date anyway, so deal with it,” Dirk stated simply. He took David by the hand before leaving, the forest glowing beneath his feet.

It had been a decade. Dave was forever twenty five. He’d also found the Jersey Devil. Or rather, he’d been found by the Devil. Said Devil had told him to call him Bro, and had dodged every question he’d asked about the Jersey Devil lore. Then he had snapped and said, be grateful the runt didn’t curse you. Whatever that meant.

Dave couldn’t leave. He’d count that as cursed. Maybe Bro meant something worse, but he still felt cursed. Bro was nice, though. Bro shared meals with him, although the first time he’d seen him fly in holding a full grown pig he nearly died. In that moment it was painfully clear just how small a human was in the Forest. His phone had stopped working as soon as David had decided to bind him to this place, too. Magic was corrupting the signal, or maybe Dirk had planted a flower in it.

That was the Forest Spirit's name: Dirk. Not anything fancy like Dietrich, just Dirk. Despite his temper, he was actually kind to Dave, in a twisted weird way. Sometimes he brought him apples, other times he tossed clothes he’d sewn down from the tree that stood outside cave.

Personal space was non-existent for him, too. Bro showered every day, and so did Dirk. Dave showered as often as he could, but it depended on whether he could catch Bro on his way. Dirk had come more than once, naked as the day he was born, David with him. He would tell Dave to follow him to a spring, the water summer-warm, and push Dave in clothes and all. He'd throw him a bar of soap, and tell him to scrub. Dirk himself just soaked. Dirt didn’t seem to come off him, but the water seemed to make him look healthy. It made his flowers more radiant, and even his irritability seemed to leave. But when Dave started to open the soap he would get out and sit on a rock in the sun.

“Soap hurts the plants, but you smell like the horse shit that fertilizes the trails,” Dirk had said the first time, knees folded to his chest, “so I’ll allow it.” I’ll allow it, those words rubbed Dave like sand paper. He was alive because Dirk allowed him to be, and was showering with soap because he was granted permission. Who knew Fae could be so...so..so infuriating. As if every scholar hadn’t told Dave that fae were little monsters. Tricksters that took humans and made them pets. Though, he’s pretty sure David wasn’t a pet. Though that was up for option. He was certainly free to come and go. Not on a gilded leash. If anything it seemed the otherway around.

David had snorted, and a pinecone hit him upside the head, he spoke regardless “He’s only permitting it because you’re filthy and I found a spell to clean the water. Bro obviously doesn’t know how to care for humans. Not anymore,” he had said, undressing himself.

Not anymore. Bro was human. Once it seemed. Then he pissed off Dirk and Dirk turned him into the monster that haunted the state.

David was attractive. He was leanly muscled, and held a different power than Bro or even Dirk. His strength lay in the fact he had Dirk on a chain. He was weaker than the spirit. His strength was in his brain and his words. He also had natural magic that he’d inherited from his mother, a woman named Roxy, a witch that had been burned centuries ago according to Bro. A woman who Bro had also said had a “Rockin bod’”.

According to myth, the Jersey Devil was the thirteenth child of a Ms. Deborah Leeds. Her labor was so intense she screamed that it’d be the Devil. And the creature, Bro, had killed the midwife and swooped from the room into the night.

In another tale, Bro was said to be the son of the Devil, and a witch.

The only thing Bro had said that might hint towards his past was the tidbit about Dave escaping being cursed by the runt, who had to have been Dirk, because runt was just about the only thing he called him. Perhaps Dirk had cursed him. It seemed plausible. Dirk and David were certainly powerful enough to curse a being as big as Bro.

 

Bro’s and Dirk’s strength came from similar places. Dirk’s came from the Forest: take that away and he’d die, because he was the Forest. Bro’s came from anger, betrayal, and death, things he often caused. The Jersey Devil was hardly a creature of love and kindness.

But bro was hardly the monster the stories gave. Devil didn’t seem right. Caged animal fit him better. He was hardly pure evil. But hurt like an animal caged with thorns surrounding it. He was definitely better than some humans. And definitely better than some fae shall not be named.

Dirk’s moods seemed to change with the seasons. In winter he vanished. David still occasionally made an appearance, but Dirk didn’t. Apparently he went dormant with the forest, waiting for the spring. In spring when he came by he seemed to walk as if he was sore, but his mood was okay—unless he’d been out for too long, then he’d be more irritated, and David would make a joke about a baby needing a nap before scooping him off his feet and taking him deep—too deep—into the forest, the leaves hiding them, swallowing them. Dave had tried to follow only to wind up back at Bro’s hideout.

Summer was the one time of the year he seemed happy all the time, and most full of life. He had an infectious grin then. His orange eyes were attentive and not dull like fall, bags under his eyes and exhaustion in his features, or overbright like spring. He was good and far from the irritable fae that captured Dave. Especially as time went on and the trees healed.

Bro on the other hand, he never seemed to disappear. Always there, watching waiting. As the years went on, he seemed to grow anxious around Dave. His hooves clopping on the stone floor. Disappearing and hoarding more things. Like a nervous tick. He seemed to be waiting for something. Though Dave wasn’t sure what.

Dave hoped this nervousness meant he was about to be released. Unchained and allowed to leave the forest. And get a bath in real hot water and drink over processed apple juice.

No dice. Fall came and with it the forest claimed Dave. Just like it claimed everything.

**Author's Note:**

> I met my quota. Time to join Dave in hibernation.


End file.
